The Nemesis Condition
by MarbleGlove
Summary: If only Harry Potter can defeat Voldemort, what do the Scoobies do when they find him first? OneShot


[G] If only Harry Potter can defeat Voldemort, what do the Scoobies do when they run into him first?

Disclaimer: This is a Buffy/Harry Potter crossover. I own none of these characters.

The Nemesis Condition

by MarbleGlove

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It was an ordinary dinner in the Great Hall. The meal was coming to an end, but people were still chatting.

A few people were worried about Lord Voldemort but most people weren't, both due largely to the same circumstances: that nothing had been heard of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named for the past several weeks. There had been a large massacre of muggles, the Dark Mark had been seen, and then ... nothing. Lord Voldemort had not been heard from since.

While a few people talked about this, namely Harry Potter and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, most of the conversations were about classes, and homework, and quidditch, and who was dating whom, and who had said what. That was, until the end, when all the conversations ended rather abruptly, many in the middle of sentences, when a girl appeared. There was what looked like a small whirlwind that coalesced into a young woman with red hair. She looked around and said, "eep," and soon her complexion tried to match her hair, but ended up clashing instead.

Everybody in the hall stared at her. Dumbledore stood but was for once at a loss for words, no one should have been able to apparate into Hogwarts, and as someone evidently could, they were all in danger from Voldemort. Before he could come up with something to say, though, he was surprised again by Severus Snape standing as well and saying in his normal scathing way, "Willow! What are you doing?"

"Er. Hello, Severus. Um, and hello other people," she gave a childish wave towards the general population.

"Well? I'm waiting." Snape tried to maintain control of himself, when he really wanted to throttle the girl. He had worked with a group of other witches and wizards to help Willow several years ago recover from overdosing on dark magic. This had been in secret from the Magic Ministry, Voldemort, and Dumbledore, and all of them would be unhappy with him, for different reasons, should they find out about that little fact. The secret seemed to be more or less blown now.

"Well. You see, there's this big bad wizard guy, and he's really bad news, and he killed a bunch of people in some really nasty ways, and so a bunch of us went after him, and it was really tricky, but we got him, but now he seems to have this super protection thing on him, and it turns out that he can only be killed by his designated killer, like a nemesis. Which is sort of weird, since sure, there are demons that can only be killed by a certain artifact, or weapon, or type of weapon, or something, but none of us have ever heard of someone who could only be killed by a certain person. Especially since as far as we can tell, it doesn't have to be a special death. I mean, he could be shot or run over with a car, or suffocated, or stabbed, or beheaded, or, or, any of a number of things, but it just has to be this one guy doing it. And..."

"Willow. You're babbling. Quit it. Now what does any of this have to do with you being here?"

"Oh." She blushed even more. "Well, we have the wizard guy locked up, and are keeping guard but none of us can kill him, because, well, I already told you why. So I cast a locating spell to find the person who can kill him, but it went wonky, and so I had to cast a spell that would just take me to him, but that didn't work either cause there's some sort of block on teleportation, so I had to modify the spell, a bit, but you're looking at me again, and I'm babbling, and so I'll quit that. But I'm here. And somewhere here, should be the person I need. However, I hadn't expected so many people here, because the only information I have about the nemesis guy is that he's alive, and that doesn't really identify a single person, since really I think a lot of the people in this room are alive."

Snape had listened to this ramble with concentration, knowing that as silly as Willow frequently sounded, she was also extremely bright, and the important information would be in there somewhere. Dumbledore had sat back down again and was just watching, for which Snape was grateful, although he knew there would be a great deal of explaining to do in the very near future. "The only thing you know about the person is that he is alive?"

"Yeah." Willow nodded enthusiastically but refrained from saying more.

"Did your information refer to 'The boy who lived'?"

"Yeah. Do you know who that is?"

"And this 'big bad wizard guy'. Do you know his name?"

"Yeah. Although I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say it. A lot of our sources don't use the name, but just say things like 'dark wizard guy' and 'the guy whose name we're not supposed to say.' And there are some things that you don't really want to say the name of because then they'll find you and eat you, or maybe they'll just gain power from you and then go and eat someone else. But it's not of the good. And I've never heard of a wizard, who's more or less human doing anything like this, but well, we try not to say the name anyway. Cause, you never know, you know?"

"Yes. I do. I believe the person you are looking for is Harry Potter, commonly referred to as 'the boy who lived.' He's sitting at that table over there next to the redheaded boy and the bushy haired girl. I assume you'll want to borrow him. While I wouldn't mind simply giving him to you to keep, Dumbledore, the headmaster here, would strongly disapprove of simply losing a student. So you should probably return him when convenient."

"Okay. Thanks, and nice to meet you Mr. Dumbledore, and I'll have him right back to you." She walked over to Harry Potter, "Hi Harry, so you heard everything I said, um, can I take you on a brief field trip, just a quick little jaunt, and all you have to do is, um, kill this guy. But he really is a bad guy, I promise, and we'd sort of like him off our hands. He can't turn good, he's spent too much time immersed in black magic, and well we can't keep him around forever, so it would be nice for us, and for him too, really since he doesn't like being kept prisoner, if you would come and quickly off this guy."

"You, you have Lord Voldemort?"

"Yeah. And are you supposed to say his name?" Willow looked worried, but then smiled, "or is this some sort of nemesis thing, you can say his name while others can't? Or at least, shouldn't?"

"Ah, it's okay, for anyone to say his name, most people are just too scared to. Um, where is he?"

"Oh, he's in this old wine cellar under our house. We didn't really have anywhere else to put him. I guess we could have put him in a cage in our library like we used to do with people we didn't want out and about, but I think he would have tried to distract us from research. So, cellar. So, can you come?"

"Um, sure."

"Oh good." Willow stood behind Harry, wrapped her arms around him and then they both disappeared in a little whirlwind.


End file.
